General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTexas has been holding this man hostage for 12,600 days
Last week, in a decision that contorted both law and fact, a state judge ruled against an illiterate, intellectually disabled black man named Jerry Hartfield.
Hartfield has been imprisoned for more than 33 years without a valid conviction or sentence authorizing his confinement. In the latest decision, the judge ruled that even though state and local officials clearly were negligent in letting Hartfield slip through the cracks all these decades, there is nothing in the Constitution that provides him with any protection from being retried. Not the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a speedy trial. Not the undisputed fact that key evidence in that long-ago trial like the alleged murder weapon, for example has disappeared. Not the fact that there is no proof that Hartfied, with an IQ testing far below standards for mental retardation, strategized to keep himself in prison for 30 years as a way of avoiding a retrial.
It's not just the third of a century of unlawful confinement that is egregious here. It's the fact that 10 months have passed since the state courts in Texas (after many years of prodding) first acknowledged the terrible mistake that was made in this case. Even this lesser period of delay is unconscionable. Jerry Hartfield, who first would have been eligible for parole in 2003 had Texas followed the law, should be free.
On June 30, 1977, Hartfield was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for killing a woman named Eunice Lowe. This verdict and death sentence were overturned on Sept. 17, 1980, because prosecutors had unconstitutionally precluded from the jury a woman who had reservations about the death penalty.
http://news.yahoo.com/texas-holding-man-hostage-12-600-days-060500679.html
The Magistrate
(95,247 posts)A vile miscarriage of justice.
Stuart G
(38,428 posts)and another link on this story from the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/14/texas-attorney-court-free-man-locked-up-decades-retrial
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)that someone would "strategized to keep himself in prison for 30 years as a way of avoiding a retrial" seems to have an IQ testing far below standards for mental retardation as well.
What a horrible injustice they have done, and apparently are still doing. I don't even know how this can happen. Even in Texas.
cyberswede
(26,117 posts)Someone would hide out in jail to avoid being tried and sent to... JAIL seems silly.
Stuart G
(38,428 posts)Taitertots
(7,745 posts)Anyone who thinks his continued detention was anything but malicious has an IQ far below standards for mental retardation.
Stuart G
(38,428 posts)I don't know...
randome
(34,845 posts)Governor Rick Perry should pardon him and be done with it. But we know Conservatives are the laziest bastards on the planet and they can't think their way through a wet paper bag.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
n2doc
(47,953 posts)What a horrible thing to do to a person. Of course this would not happen to a white rancher....